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by nate·4y ago·view on hn ↗
Ran into the exact same problem with a very simple camera app I made. Camera app was completely gesture based. So you never had to find a button to quickly flip the camera to the other side of the phone or find the button to start/stop recording. It made using a camera a lot quicker to get multiple shots of a scene and your reaction shot. Also added in stabilization to the front lens, which was easy but wasn't enabled at the time in the native camera app.

I got the "too simple" response.

Which was the whole point. A camera with zero buttons. I still pointed out the 5 or 7 features it had that technically the iOS camera wasn't doing. I would get a different reason back then. So I'd argue a different point. Then after weeks of this, it came back with the "too simple" reason again.

And I was left with the same conclusion. I don't think Apple wants anyone "outsimpling" their camera app. Maybe if I had added a social network to it or filters or something I could have finally gotten it approved. But I lost the desire to keep fighting :)

(Just by posting this, now I fear I broke some kind of TOS, and can never publish an iOS app again?)

10 comments
(author here) Man that camera app sounds so good! I love gesture based apps, and I'm tired of going looking for buttons on the most used functions of a device..

The biggest problem I try to convey is that you have no way of knowing you'll get the rejection without putting the work in first.

So you, like me, wasted probably days (if not weeks) to create a fully functional app, spent much of that time on user-facing functions that you would have probably not needed, only to find that it was for nothing.

It's not like on Android where you can just share an APK with your friends.

TestFlight still has to review your betas, if you want to at least share the app with someone else.

Thanks! Yeah, exactly. Even put in the work and a little but of money to create a slightly fancy icon. Called it Somersault to convey how easy it was now to switch lenses, and the icon was a camera somersaulty conveying kind of thing. But alas, not published, and haven't touched iOS dev again.
Disgusting, I am sorry. I love gestures and it sounds like you came up with a very neat app
The maddening/frustrating part is that Apple ACTUALLY APPROVED almost exactly the same thing, and ironically, by another commenter elsewhere in this thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32526387

The app is by the same developer, and is findable at https://apps.apple.com/us/app/zero-ui-gesture-only-camera/id...

So clearly, the App Review process is not deterministic, and highly dependent on which reviewer you get or something similar.

This kind of story, along with many others, is why I have no interest in developing on iOS. I've made a handful of web apps for fun, and have mulled over ideas that could be a real business, but they're always web first. The aggravation and risk that comes from having your platform owned by Apple scares the hell out of me.
Man folks really gotta stop supporting Apple. Company ethics are terrible. But then again folks don't treat tech with the same ethical standards as they treat other industries.
The real reason is that they don't want more apps. There are too many, so any small independent dev has an uphill battle getting their app approved.
> The real reason is that they don't want more apps. There are too many…

Is your thought process here that 3.7 million apps is where Apple decided to draw a line in the sand?

I don’t see how that wouldn’t make sense…

It’s not that they decided to set an arbitrary threshold of 3.7M apps, but that they have become more stringent on app approvals in light of the growth and quantity of apps in their store. I don’t think GP’s comment requires an incredulous snarky response, despite me not doing a great job making this point…

My comment was sincere. I'm interested in what the parent commenter believes triggered Apple to start specifically targeting small, independent developers.
FWIW, I completely got your point. The Android ecosystem is horrible for this kind of thing. There are roughly 200,000 varieties of calculator apps. Why? There should be some criteria to help consumers avoid poorly supported simplistic clones that are often just filled with adware.
Now that would be a fascinating development. Apple blocking most new apps because there are already too many of them. I can imagine some scenarios.

"Candidates for this job are required to have released an app on the iOS store"

"Fortune 100 corporation is suing Apple because it won't accept its app"

"Only 1 in 154 app applications is accepted by Apple"

"College admission consultants are starting to recommend high school students seeking admission to top colleges to release an app on the Apple store"

"Study shows college applicants who have release an app on the iOS store are twice as likely to gain admission to an Ivy League school"

"82% of Harvard's class of 2028 released an app on the Apple store prior to admission"

"Study shows that releasing an app on the Apple store and advertising that fact in your online dating profile triples your odds of a match"

> Fortune 100 corporation is suing Apple because it won't accept its app

Apple refusing Fortune 100 apps happens more often than people think IMO.

Big corps churn out apps that are mere browsing shells of an otherwise widely available online service, just to have an icon on the AppStore. And they’ll get shutdown for that, forced to add some dumb gimmick to the app to get approval.

Which would be weird, because that means, like an oracle investor they need to predict which new apps will be a hit and are worth adding, and which will be flops and will add to the noise.

If they ban all new indie apps, then the next hits are going to happen over in Android land, and Apple miss out on a lot of revenue.

Maybe that is the idea, make a hit on Android first, then you are allowed in the Apple store!

Why, they can reject but make notes, keep statistics of what "too simple" features people try to develop. Then some of that could be rolled into their existing core apps.
This reminds me of the StarCraft Arcade which was supposed to be the successor of the Warcraft 3 modding scene. Well it turns out they didn't add a way to browse all maps, you can only pick among the top 50 of maps. How do you get your map to be in the top 50? The creator must upload his map and only he can host it and then play it with other players until it is popular enough to displace one of the top 50 maps. What this means is that the original maps were entrenched because it was impossible and incredibly inconvenient to play any other maps.

If you wanted to play a map you would just upload it yourself, which then counts as a separate map in the popularity statistics meaning all new maps had pretty much zero popularity in the ranking.

Compare this to warcraft3 where playing a map downloads it onto your computer and people thereby build up a collection of maps they can host organically through playing the game. People host maps they like so you got an automatic ranking system where good maps spread on everyone's computers and bad maps don't get shared further.

To expand on parent’s point, it’s not that they want a set number of apps available. They’ll just raise the bar as they approach what they see as “too many apps” situation, and will put pressure on app devs to show better, more viables ideas to their eyes. Noise will still grow, but at a way lower pace.

To your point, there’s two mechanisms already at play: indie devs need to spend significant effort to be published, so they need to at least believe in their ideas (weeds out an enormous number of new apps already), and they need to keep maintaining their apps, as they’ll get garbage collected if the app stays unupdated.

If only they'd go and cull the list of already accepted/approved apps that are nothing but clones. that would probably make the list so small that it would look bad.
Or they could let the users and developers decide how many apps are too many apps.z
Letting people install programs without a store!? Ridiculous!
This is probably true, and also so sad.

They have their business reasons, but this comes at the detriment of some many things, as they’re fighting tooth and nails against side loading.

There’s a few million garbage apps waiting to be deleted.

Namely the billions of unique apps for ever single brandless Chinese peripheral ever.

Exactly. The reviewer isn’t thinking about the big picture. It’s so weird people think this. As if the Ceo is reviewing every app.
> Which was the whole point. A camera with zero buttons. I still pointed out the 5 or 7 features it had that technically the iOS camera wasn't doing. I would get a different reason back then. So I'd argue a different point. Then after weeks of this, it came back with the "too simple" reason again.

One way to get around this might be to have a mandatory tutorial that must be executed on first install. At least you know the random reviewer assigned to your product will be aware of all the features available, and as a benefit you have a way to onboard new users who might be mystified about why this product is useful. This might be a hassle for new users, but after your first approval, you can add a skip option in an update.

You probably embarrassed Apple for how simple a camera app can be.
They will probably replicate his design in the future.
Knowing Apple it's probably in the works already and that's the reason the app was rejected.
Not knowing Apple’s approval process, is it possible to pull a “Ship of Theseus” on the App Store, like release a full-blown social network app and then gradually replace features until it functions as a simple camera app instead?
How frustrating. I wonder how common it is for devs to dump significant effort into an iOS app / passion project only to be told "No" by the App Store review process.

Is there any way around this? The prospect of building a functional piece of software that cannot be deployed is kind of tragic :/

>Ran into the exact same problem with a very simple camera app I made.

>[...]

>(Just by posting this, now I fear I broke some kind of TOS, and can never publish an iOS app again?)

This is how your loyalty to Apple's racket is rewarded. This is your prize for buying hundreds of dollars of their equipment and paying hundreds to license their development kit and get your software reviewed for their locked-down phones.

But it's okay because [vague arguments about "protection" and "privacy"]
It's about making sure the apps are on brand with Apple delivering the best experience to its users.
Lol @ claims to make best environment for users by alienating a whole segment of users...
That's the entire reason I buy only Apple products! /s
* Protection and privacy policy not honored in all countries.
They’re not vague, they’re documented and substantial.
Very little of iOS is FOSS, so whether or not Apple actually protects your privacy boils down to "just take our word for it".

Transparency is a dependency of trust. Apple is not transparent, and therefore I trust an iDevice about as far as I can throw it.

> paying hundreds to license their development kit

hundreds or hundred?

Hundred per year isn't it? So 'hundreds' seems reasonable.
One hundred. Every year.
After year 1
I don't know, I'm not a iOS developer and I probably never will be. hundreds is the figure from a couple years ago when I last looked into it.
Poor software developers, how could they ever afford to overcome these massive barriers to entry. Every. Year.

If only they had a decent source of steady income.

Snark aside, I suppose that most independent iOS developers don't receive enough in sales to offset the $99 entry fee.

I suppose that the kind of enthusiast Apple prefer to see on their platform is an enthusiastic consumer. Which very much aligns with their desire to keep their gadgets in the class of locked-down home appliances, like a TV or a gaming console.

Create an app with complex filters and social shit and make the app hit an HTTP endpoint to see if they should be enabled on startup. Once the app is accepted into the store, hide the stupid features remotely. :-)
Or just make an app with a bunch of weird filters and shit, and an option in the settings to turn it to a simple app.